COVID-19 Intensifies the World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen

Listed amongst the most unstable states in the Middle East, Yemen has witnessed extreme levels of violence, poverty, corruption, and misery since 2015. More than 80% of Yemen’s population, reaching around 24 million people, require some kind of assistance as they lack access to basic needs such as clean water, food, and sanitation. With the COVID-19 outbreak, the country now faces major obstacles all at once: a humanitarian crisis accompanied by a soaring health crisis, as well as an economic crisis that continues to worsen by the day.

The current humanitarian crisis in Yemen escalated as a product of multiple political events, starting with the overthrow of the country’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, during the Arab Spring in 2011. The new president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, inherited a fragmented nation with complex problems and deep population grievances. Being a Muslim majority country with mostly Sunni tribal descendants, the marginalization of Shia Muslims debuted in the 1970s as more and more Yemenis moved to work and study in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. With the support of Iran, the rebel Houthi group, representing the country’s Muslim Shia minority, strengthened and started taking control of territories including the country’s capital in 2014. Alarmed by the rise of the Houthi movement and its vital role in Iran’s regional political agenda, with the support of the UK, the US, and France, eight Arab countries carried out an air attack in July 2015 in hopes of restoring order. The failure of this attack led to a prolonged conflict that still continues today.

The Houthi movement even attacked Saudi Arabian territories on multiple occasions such as September 2019’s drone attack on the Saudi state-owned oil goliath “Aramco” oil processing facilities. This incidence further heightened tensions and engulfed the Yemeni population into deeper insecurity following the installment of a blockade on Yemen. The conflict evolved through the years as different Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, backed different rebel groups with distinct ideologies, fighting each other with missiles and on the front-line.

Since the beginning of the proxy war, there have been multiple violations of International law by both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebel group: the killing and bombing by Saudi air forces of thousands of Yemeni civilians and their shelters violate the laws of war as does the recruitment of children and use of landmines by Yemeni rebel groups. The bombing of hospitals, markets, mosques, and essential infrastructure by the Saudi-led coalition, affected Yemeni civilians the most, the main victims of this quarrel. Although both parties have received international condemnation and faced outrage regarding their actions, violence has not yet been terminated in the region.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020, Saudi Arabia requested a ceasefire, demonstrating its commitment to the UN efforts in reaching a political solution and for the prevention of the propagation of the coronavirus in Yemen. Perceiving this proposal as a political scheme, the Houthi rebels rejected the Saudi-led coalition’s ceasefire request as the coalition had also previously disrespected a ceasefire. Thus, the outbreak of the pandemic quickly worsened the situation in Yemen. To understand the magnitude of the impact of the pandemic, it should be noted that Yemen has the population with the weakest immunities in the world due to the ongoing war conditions along with a fragile health system. Currently, many healthcare workers work unpaid, the country has a huge shortage of health equipment, including masks and gloves, and a majority of hospitals are not fit to operate.

The crisis in Yemen will have long term effects and harsh aftermath as the new generation that will inherit the nation, torn down to rubble, are partly uneducated. Even before the start of the pandemic, two million Yemeni children have been out of school. On a global scale, Yemen has one of the least developed economies, along with a high debt to GDP ratio, making it even more difficult to secure sovereign funds and bonds for the reconstruction of the country. The direct impact of the five-year-long war has also heavily weighed on the Yemeni rial, which has lost more than 130% of its value. By consequence, the consumption power and spending decreased parallelly with the country’s import capacity, which includes essential foods such as wheat and rice. Leading to hyperinflation, the devaluation of the Yemeni rial posed an extra challenge for the survival of the civilians. On the other hand, the weak domestic output, lack of raw materials, mismanagement of oil reserves to generate government revenues, and the dependency on an undeveloped fishing and agriculture industry have not allowed the economy to achieve a trade balance. The civilians’ cost of this ongoing conflict alarmingly increases as 10 million people face the risk of famine and have no source of income, which engulfs them in further poverty.

With the uncontrollable spread of the coronavirus, continuous fighting, and decreasing worldwide humanitarian funding, Yemen currently experiences a triple emergency. Yemen’s current complex crisis continues to be one of a magnitude that has been seen a few times in the modern era, mainly consisting of the humanitarian side, which is in extreme collapse. The COVID-19 pandemic shook the whole world by surprise, destroying economies, sectors, and millions of enterprises. However, for Yemenis, the pandemic constitutes merely one of the many miseries they endure every day; thus, the country’s trajectory is not expected to change anytime soon.

It would also be important to remember that this conflict constitutes a big part of the regional rivalry that exists between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran, carrying the potential of sparking further tensions in the region. World leaders and global organizations should immediately hear out Yemen’s voice and reach out before the nation’s last gasp of breath.